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harrydog10 · ‎19-06-2015

I cannot believe the news, 2 stowaways on a BA flight, hiding in the landing gear, one fell out onto the roof of a building at Heathrow and died, the other is critically ill in hospital. I am surprised either of them survived the 11 hours or whatever, it must have been -65 or something. Unbelieveable..

dark_castle1 · ‎19-06-2015

Maybe they had a big bowl of ready brek before they left ! Obviously the one that fell did not drink his can of Red Bull !

Gets my coat>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

leoleoleo123 · ‎19-06-2015

Sad that people are that desperate..

happened last year too if i remember rightly.

cookiecookuk · ‎19-06-2015

yes leo i have heard of this before.

.................................................................................................................
Running away from your problems is a race you will never win.

peteryola · ‎19-06-2015

It does seem to happen fairly regularly, unfortunately. This is not confined to flights to the UK either. It seems to me that apart from the obvious human element of the story, there is clearly a huge security risk to flights as well that negates all the security that passengers and crew have to pass through before they can board a flight.

cee-dee · ‎19-06-2015

That's a very valid point and one that all airports should have well covered by now.

Spelling out the obvious, if some unauthorised person can get near enough to an aircraft to actually stow away in the wheel well, they could also plant a bomb in there!

It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

otherego · ‎20-06-2015

I just hope this doesn't result in a knee-jerk intensification of "security." Flying is annoying enough already, and I personally find Jo'burg among the most irritating of airports.

Sure, somebody who manages to climb into a wheel well could equally place something nasty there - but stowaways (and worse) remain a very rare occurrence. Not something that puts me off flying, TBH.

What intrigues me is that someone (the survivor) seems to have survived 10-11 hours in a wheel well. I can only assume that I've misunderstood this, and that he was actually lurking in the cargo hold. Even that would be pretty nasty, since these are generally unheated, although pressurised (yes, I know heating can be applied eg for the carriage of animals - but I doubt whether one could bank on this.)

Decompression is regarded as a serious emergency - urgent enough to necessitate immediate descent as fast as the aircraft is able, despite the control/handling challenges this poses, and the risk of encountering other traffic below. Even in the freighters, we were taught to descend as rapidly as possible. (Great fun - in a simulator.) It must be even more scary in passenger aircraft, where the self loading cargo only has little plastic cups feeding them enough diluted oxygen to avoid loss of consciousness/irreversible brain damage for the six - twelve minutes that the oxygen flow lasts. (That's assuming they grab the masks and don them immediately - IIRC, at 41 000 feet you've got about seven seconds to figure out what's happening and do something.)

For someone to survive up there for hours with no supplemental oxygen is pretty amazing.

A tragedy which has happened before and will doubtless happen again - very, very sad.

harrydog10 · ‎20-06-2015

Lol DC. It is sad that people are so desperate to do this, but to actually reach your destination and then fall out and kill yourself is just plain unlucky.I feel sorry for the people who had to deal with the aftermath though.